The Department of Budget and Management has disallowed Negros Occidental provincial government’s 2018 allocation of P504,457,935 that is in excess of its Personal Services (PS) cap, forcing the dissolution of a newly created department and division at the Capitol.

The Local Finance Committee is drafting a resolution for the Provincial Human Resource Department to be reverted back to an office, and for the Organic Farming Division to be dissolved, Provincial Budget Officer Jose Percival Salado Jr. said yesterday.

The LFC resolution, which he is drafting, will be submitted to Gov. Alfredo Marañon for appropriate action, Salado said.

The DBM said the newly created positions for the new department and division are illegal, he added. “The Commission on Audit has also directed us to follow the decision of the DBM,”Salado said.

“So we have to undo what we have created, and personnel will have to return to their old posts,” Salado said.

The personnel of the Organic Farming Division will be transferred to the Office of the Provincial Agriculturist, while personnel of the human resource department will also return to their old positions, under an office, he said.

That means those who were given higher ranks with the creation of the human resource department will go back to their previous salary grades. The head of the human resource department will return to her post as assistant department head, Salado added.

There were seven posts created for the Organic Farming Division and the HR department had 15 newly created positions with higher salary grades, but it is still being determined how many were filled up, Salado said.

DBM OIC Regional Director Mae Chua in a letter to Marañon on Nov. 5, 2018, said the 2018 Annual Budget of the province of Negros Occidental was submitted to the DBM IV for review and was declared inoperative in part.

The amount to P504,457,935 was disallowed as it represents the excess of the PS cap/limitation, Chua said.

Chua pointed out that the positions in the HR department and Organic Farming Division should be disallowed considering that while they were created in 2017 they were only funded in the 2018 annual budget.

The provincial government exceeded its PS cap by P106 million in 2015, P199 million in 2016, P298 million in 2017 and P504 million in 2018, Chua said.*